Economic planning approach for electric vehicle charging stations integrating traffic and power grid constraints

Large-scale electric vehicle (EV) charging will bring new challenges to coordination of grid and transportation. To facilitate large-scale EV applications, optimal locating and sizing of charging stations have become essential. For the investors of a charging station, economic benefit is the primary and the only objective. In this context, this work studies the siting and sizing of EV stations based on the optimal economic benefit. Benefit changes with time, location and capacity. A planning model method considering net present value (NPV) and life cycle cost (LCC) is proposed to determine the site and the size of the charging stations. The model has integrated distribution network constraint, the user constraint and the traffic flow captured constraint. Origin-destination lines and voronoi diagram are selected to calculate the traffic flow and the service region of each charging station, respectively. The quantum genetic algorithm was adopted for a better convergence of the planning model. Finally, a coupled 33-node distribution system and a 36-node transportation system are used to simulate various scenarios in the coupled networks of grid and transportation. The simulation results show that by introducing a planning model method considering NPV and LCC, the charging station economical benefits can be further improved.